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CardName: Flexible Bird Cost: (2/W)(2/U) Type: Creature - Bird Pow/Tgh: 2/2 Rules Text: Flying Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Cards With No Home Common

Flexible Bird
({2/w})({2/u})
 
 C 
Creature – Bird
Flying
2/2
Created on 20 Dec 2012 by Alex

History: [-]

2012-12-20 10:15:31: Alex created the card Flexible Bird

This was proposed by James Bartolotti on a discussion thread over at Goblin Artisans, and I love it. I love the way that all four possible prices are perfectly fair for their colours. (Cf Wind Drake, Wild Griffin, Azorius First-Wing, and Skinwing.)

­Vassal Soul seems to show they prefer cards this flexible to be a bit harder to cast, boringly. But I like this version.

LOL. That's awesome. It's pretty much the definition of a Melvin card: one which is awesome because of the neat way it fulfils the rules, in this case the colour pie and development rules :)

It's true that flexibility comes at a price: obviously you can't in general say that "grizzly bears is balanced, and shock is balanced, and doom blade is balanced, so a card I can play as EITHER grizzly bears OR doom blade OR shock is balanced" :)

OTOH, even if this is a bit better than vassal soul, it still seems reasonable.

Well, there's only been one Azorius First-Wing as far as I can remember. It isn't like we've seen another 2/2 flyer for {w}{u}, so I don't know if we can assume that's standard. That said, yes, this is cool. This must be cycle material while we're at it. {2/r}{2/b} seems like a fine alternative casting cost for Rakdos Shred-Freak.

@jmg: True. But OTOH {w}{w} gets Leonin Skyhunter, most recently at common; and even gets better than that (Kor Aeronaut). Given the gold discount, I'm sure {w}{u} for a 2/2 flyer is reasonable. Note that Azorius First-Wing has another ability on top of flying.

@jack: Heh, true. I think actually there's another reason why Vassal Soul is so colour-intensive: it's because they didn't want the hybrid commons in RtR to be easily splashed, or to be very easy to play in decks with only one of their colours. Every hybrid common in RtR has two hybrid mana symbols, in stark contrast to the original Ravnica where every hybrid common only had one hybrid mana symbol.

So it may well be that in another set, with different development aims, Vassal Soul could have been {2}{w/u}.

Ah, right, right. I forgot to think of {w}{w}. My bad.

I like the idea of the cycle. Let's see. Something that you'd get for {2}{r}, {r}{g}, {2}{g} or {4}. A vanilla 3/2? Green gets a bit better than that (Centaur Courser), but it's still playable if unexciting in green decks. The rest of the options are fine - Scrapbasket, Goblin Roughrider. This might do better as {2/b}{2/r}, actually: Moriok Reaver, Goblin Deathraiders.

The {2/g}{2/w} option could perhaps be a vigilant 2/2 or 2/3. Cf Steward of Valeron, Snapping Creeper, Steadfast Guard.

Having a bit more trouble with {2/u}{2/b}.

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